Rhodessa Jones

RHODESSA JONES is Co-Artistic Director of the San Francisco acclaimed performance company Cultural Odyssey. She is an actress, teacher, singer, and writer. Ms. Jones is also the Founder and Director of the award winning "Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women" which is a performance workshop that is designed to achieve personal and social transformation with incarcerated women. In the spring of 2004 Ms. Jones will be honored with an Honorary Doctorate Degree from California College of the Arts. During the winter semester Rhodessa was Visiting Artist in Residence at Stanford University /Institute for Diversity in the Arts. In February 2004 Rhodessa performed the role of "Ruby" in August Wilson's King Hedley II at the Lorraine Hansberry Theater. In November 2003 she was presented with a "GOLDIE Lifetime Achievement Award" presented by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. In May 2003 Ms. Jones was awarded a Non-Profit Arts Excellence Award by the San Francisco Business Arts Council. In June Ms. Jones received an Otto Rene Castillo Award for Political Theater as well as a San Francisco Foundation Community Leadership Award that commended her for developing the Medea Project as an intersection of art, politics, and social rehabilitation.. Throughout the Fall of 2002 she toured her most recent solo performance, Hot Flashes, Power Surges, and Private Summers to Out North Theater in Anchorage, Alaska, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center in Tampa, Florida, Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, CT, and Sushi Gallery in San Diego. While in residence at Yale, Ms. Jones led workshops and conducted Master Classes for the MFA students. She also lectured at the African American Cultural Center at Yale University and was honored with a Master’s Tea hosted by Faculty of the Yale School of Drama. In the winter of 2001, Ms. Jones was featured in Eve Ensler’s award hit play, “The Vagina Monologues”, produced by Theater on the Square. Following, in June 2001, her film collaboration "We Just Telling Stories" won “Best Documentary” at the San Francisco Black Film Festival. The film profiles Ms. Jones and her work with the Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women in the San Francisco County jails. This award parallels the recent release of a book on Ms. Jones’ work entitled, Imagining Medea: Rhodessa Jones and the Theater for Incarcerated Women. This book was released in December 2001 by author Rena Fraden, Ph.D. with a forward by Professor Angela Davis. Ms. Jones is in demand as a keynote speaker. In October 2002 she addressed the Cabrillo College Women's Studies Conference and the Center Force Summit 2002 Conference. As a scholar of art for social change, Jones has taught at venues as diverse as Lowell Prison for Women, Yale, UC Berkeley, Glide Memorial Church, and as Guest-Scholar-in-Residence at the Getty Museum. During Fall of 2000 she taught as visiting professor at University of California at Berkeley. Her lecture-workshop on Creative Performance/Creative Survival introduced the Medea Project methods to university students, high school students, and community service organizations, and culminated in a sold-out production titled It’s a Pastime Paradise: Nobody Gets Out Alive. In July 2000, she was a featured teacher at LaMama Umbria, an international theater training workshop in Italy, hosted by LaMama ETC of New York. In June1999, she was resident teacher at New World Theater in Amherst, MA, and she performed at the Women of the World Festival in Copenhagen, Denmark. Last May, she directed the nationally acclaimed world premiere of Erin Cressida Wilson’s Trail of Her Inner Thigh for Campo Santo at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco. Ms. Jones has also directed the new work by Will Power entitled The Gathering which was presented at the National Black Theater Festival and at Theater Artaud in San Francisco in September 1999. The Black Theatre Network presented Ms. Jones with the President’s Pathfinder Award in August 1998 for "Path-breaking Work in the Development of Black Theatre." In March 1998, Ms. Jones completed a residency at the Getty Research Institute where she contributed to a workshop on "The Humanities in Public Culture." Her published works include "Rhodessa Jones: Theater for a New Millennium," Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance in the Twentieth Century; Theater Communications Group, 1999 (article). "Deep In The Night," in Journal of Medical Humanities; Volume 19, Numbers 2/3, Summer 1998 (performance script). "Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women," in Colored Contradictions: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Plays; Harry Elam & Robert Alexander, eds., Penguin Books USA, 1996. In May 1992, Ms. Jones appeared in Bill T. Jones’ Dance/Opera - THE MOTHER OF THREE SONS with choreography and staging by Bill T. Jones, libretto by Ann T. Green, and music by Leroy Jenkins for the Houston Grand Opera. Rhodessa also performed the American premiere of the opera for the New York City Opera during October 1991, and at the world premiere for the International Festival For New Musical Theater in Munich and Aachen, West Germany during 1990. Rhodessa Jones also collaborated with her brother/ dancer/ choreographer, Bill T. Jones, and Idris Ackamoor on "Perfect Courage", which premiered at San Francisco’s Festival 2000 during October 1990. The performance toured in New York and Minneapolis’ Walker Arts Center. "Perfect Courage" received Dance Bay Area’s 1991 Izzie award for Outstanding Achievement in Performance. In 1989-90, Ms. Jones performed, and toured "I THINK IT’S GONNA WORK OUT FINE" a collaboration with OBIE Award winning playwright Ed Bullins and Idris Ackamoor. The musical has toured nationally and internationally appearing at La Mama Theater in New York, Black Ensemble Theater in Chicago, St. Louis Repertory in St. Louis, and throughout Europe. During December 1990 the show toured Japan. In 1990, Rhodessa created "Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women", a show comprised of a series of monologues based on the lives of real women who are incarcerated. The show continues to tour throughout America to enthusiastic reviews and audiences.